Transcendent Gene
Chapter 84: First Kill [2]

Chapter 84: First Kill [2]

The room was pitch-black. Gio didn’t remember how he got here, but he remembered being struck in the back of the head with a blunt object.

When he opened his eyes again, all he saw was darkness.

Whoosh!

There was a small sound as someone ripped a hood off of his head. He tried to move, only to realize he had been tied to the chair he was seated on with ropes on his ankles and wrists.

His mouth was gagged as well. The only thing he could do was see.

Thunk!

The sound of someone activating a mechanism rang out, followed by a flash of light that Gio’s eyes had to get used to.

When he did, he could see that the spotlight in question was pointed at the area in front of him. His own body was still barely outside the light, but he could now see.

There was another person in his sight.

Another person was there at the other edge of the light, tied to a chair just like him.

Despite being unable to see each other clearly, they felt their eyes lock from across the room.

"Welcome."

Before they could question their situation further, a deep, altered voice resounded through the space through a speaker system in the ceiling.

"I will give the two of you a moment to assume the reason you are here."

The owner of that voice was impossible to recognize through the modulation, but the tone was easily recognizable. It was a tone that both of them would know if they didn’t develop sudden memory loss.

’They didn’t tell me it would be like this.’

Gio’s eyes widened. The fact that he gave them time to figure things out, combined with that oh-so-recognizable vocal inflection...

’They told me it would go smoothly. They said I wouldn’t have to do anything.’

Gio’s eyes sharpened and narrowed soon after widening.

’I knew it was too dangerous from the beginning. I never should have accepted their offer.’

A little over a year ago, NEXUS offered him a mission, telling him that if he could accomplish it, he would be rewarded massively.

Naturally, he wasn’t one to act on fleeting promises, but the things they promised were too enticingly realistic.

They offered him exactly what he needed most, so he took the mission.

He was to go undercover and earn the trust of a black organization, a group of djinn that strongly opposed NEXUS. This particular black organization, called WICKED, was notorious.

They had stood in the way of human advancement several times and were the cause of several disasters. Since it was a way to win one against them while gaining benefits, Gio didn’t think there would be a problem.

He was supposed to be doing computer work, anyway. There wasn’t anything about the job that required combat or combat expertise.

Gio had been working with WICKED while providing information to NEXUS for a year now. He was only able to access small tidbits of knowledge while earning their trust, but he thought the time had come for them to move him up to a more important role.

Well, that was exactly what they were doing.

"If you haven’t realized why you’re here yet, it’s better off for you to stay that way. The two of you have good potential, but only one of you can become a part of the spider. You will decide today which one of you that is."

The man’s voice cut off there. The floor between the two chairs opened, allowing a small platform to raise itself above ground. On it was a single coffee table, and on that coffee table was a single gun.

It wasn’t a new gun, but an antique model that was made using rudimentary techniques from the ancient era, somewhere around the 21st to 24th century.

There wasn’t a need for more to be said.

Whoosh!

A breeze swept past Gio’s head. He felt a lightness in his arms and legs before he realized they’d been untied.

He slowly stood up, removing the gag in his mouth.

"Hey..."

He said a word. Maybe he could reason with the other man or talk his way out of this...

However, he was the only one thinking about talking.

He was the only one who wasn’t prepared for this moment.

The other man rushed forward the moment his ropes were cut. Without a choice, Gio rushed forward too.

"Hey!"

The man reached for the gun, but before he could grab it, Gio tackled him to the ground.

"Calm down, dammit!"

He didn’t want to fight. He had been trained before, but he didn’t ever want to use those skills.

He thought it was possible to do something to maneuver himself out of the situation.

But he was wrong.

Bang!

His vision went hazy as a punch landed on the side of his face. The man pushed him off to the side and stumbled up, taking the gun off the table and pointing it at him.

At that point, Gio was acting purely on instinct. He lunged forward and tackled the man’s legs, bringing him down again. As he fumbled with the gun, it flew out of his hand and landed on the ground a couple feet away.

Gio saw it, but didn’t rush for it. He tried to contain the man with martial skills instead.

But that wasn’t enough.

The two of them tussled on the ground. Gio couldn’t maintain complete control with no battle senses, after all. He threw wild punches at the man to knock him down, but only a portion of them landed.

Of that portion, only one or two were good hits.

The man was the same. Neither of them were fighters.

But one of them knew that he was going to die here if he didn’t get to that gun, and the other hadn’t accepted that yet.

Gio was in denial.

He took hit after hit. His face was bloodied, and soon after, he started feeling an ache in his stomach.

The impact of those punches accumulated as the two moved closer and closer to the gun, and when they were close enough, the other man dove for it.

He wasn’t going to give Gio time to stop him again.

He got his hands on it and immediately turned it on Gio without even standing up.

Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!

Everything had been prepared for them to kill each other. He only had to pull the trigger for shots to fire.

And even if he didn’t aim at all, Gio couldn’t escape uninjured at this proximity.

The first shot hit him in the right shoulder. His eyes widened. It felt like his heart stopped. All of his thoughts stopped. A searing pain emanated from his shoulder for only a moment before it turned into a sharper, more icy kind of agony.

It felt like there was poison pulsing through him where the bullet hit, sending shockwaves throughout his entire body.

He desperately crawled forward. He didn’t even feel the other three shots that hit him in the side and the leg.

The adrenaline had already kicked in. The realization that this was a matter of life and death set in at the same time.

And desperation overflowed through his veins.

Gio acted on his desperate desire to live, pushing forward as the man fumbled with the gun.

Click!

His ears registered the sound of it jamming, but his mind didn’t. He reached the other man’s legs and grabbed them, pulling with all his might.

No matter how his opponent tried to kick him off, he stayed attached like a leech. He bit the man’s shin, sending a shock of pain coursing up his body and distracting him.

If he was still in his right mind enough to not do such a thing, perhaps he would have died that day.

But he did, and his opponent, who was just as untrained as him, wasn’t prepared for it.

He stumbled, trying to kick harder. Gio pulled his leg as he raised it, knocking it out from under him.

The man fell on his back, his head slamming against the cold concrete.

Bang!

A loose shot was fired into the wall randomly.

He tried to keep his grip on the gun, but when his body rebounded off the ground, the shock loosened his grip and left it lying by his side.

Gio’s eyesight was getting groggier by the second, but he saw it.

The rest was not an experience, but exclusively a memory. From that point on, Gio had no recollection of events outside of what [Memory Book] showed him.

Somehow, he reached the gun.

Somehow, he lugged his body over the other man’s and flung the gun up to his neck.

And somehow, when he pulled the trigger, the jam in the gun was gone.

It fired true with every pull of the trigger, putting another bullet in the man’s neck.

The blood leaked slowly the first time, but as he shot and shot, his hands became stained in the almost bright red liquid.

He didn’t stop pulling the trigger even after the gun was unloaded. The clicking sound didn’t stop until Gio passed out as well.

He managed to miraculously win the battle and keep his life, but in turn, he became a murderer. He killed someone who, most likely, was not yet guilty of any serious crimes.

And when he opened his eyes in the hospital after finishing his remembrance, when he got used to the light and moved his hand, he saw that face.

The smiling face of the man who was sitting by his side, waiting for him to awaken.

And, the only face that could be attached to the voice that forced him to commit murder.

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